A man claiming allegiance to the Islamic State group who killed a French police officer and his partner in their home west of Paris Monday night, left behind a hit list naming journalists, rappers, police offers and public figures, authorities said.

Larossi Abballa, 25, who was killed by police, was a known jihadist who had recently completed a three-year jail sentence on a terrorism charge, and was under surveillance at the time of the attack.

Abballa attacked the police officer, who has not been named, in Magnanville, west of Paris, around 8 p.m. Monday, Paris prosecutor François Molins told a press conference on Tuesday.

Abballa then went inside the house and killed the officer’s partner, who was also a police employee.

“This is indisputably a terrorist attack,” French President François Hollande said in a brief statement on the margins of an economic meeting in Paris. “Its author wanted it to be recognized as a terrorist attack, and the organization to which he claimed allegiance also claimed the act.”

“France is facing a major terrorist threat.… We have therefore mobilized great resources in terms of police and intelligence,” he added.

Shortly after the attack, Hollande held a high-level security meeting to coordinate the government’s security response.

At a separate press conference, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve called the attack “appalling” and said anti-terrorism investigators were working on putting any accomplices “out of commission.”

Molins said three men, aged 27, 29 and 44, have been detained.

Attack claimed on Facebook

While inside the house, Abballa used Facebook’s livestream application to broadcast a message in which he said he was acting in response to a call from ISIL’s chief spokesman, according to terrorism specialist David Thomson who tweeted accounts of the broadcast.

Molins said Abballa was a practising Muslim, observed Ramadan and had pledged allegiance to ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi three weeks before.

Abballa said that he was following a call to kill non-believers in their homes with their families, Molins said, and indicated that he knew his victim was a police officer.

“The Euro (tournament) will be a graveyard,” Thomson quoted Abballa as having said, referring to the European football championship underway in France.

Abballa also urged followers to kill police officers, journalists, rappers and others who he identified by name.

With the deceased couple’s three-year-old child sitting behind him on a sofa, Abballa reportedly added: “I haven’t yet decided what I will do with him.”

Abballa also managed to send two tweets, Molins said, using an account created only a week before.

Special police forces raided the house in the early hours of Tuesday, and, after a brief negotiation, shot Abballa dead.

“The negotiation was very brief, because we were dealing with someone who had no interest in negotiating,” police spokesman Jerome Bonet said on BFMTV. “He was not asking for anything. He wanted confrontation, and was in a suicidal mode.”

Police found three knives (one bloodied on the table), three phones and a hit list naming journalists, rappers, police offers and public figures, but no explosives, Molins said.

Early Tuesday, the ISIL-linked A’maq press agency claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement, saying the killings had been carried out by an ISIL “fighter.”

Abballa’s Facebook post was deleted early Tuesday.

Suspect was under surveillance

Abballa was convicted in 2013 of participation in a terrorist conspiracy due to his involvement in a six-man group that had traveled to Pakistan with the aim of meeting Al Qaeda officials.

Two men had been arrested upon their arrival in Pakistan. Abballa, considered a “minor player,” stayed behind and had played a role as a recruiter and jack of all trades, a former anti-terrorism magistrate said.

“He wanted to do jihad, that is certain,” Marc Trévidic, the magistrate who first indicted Abballa, told Le Figaro daily.

“He trained in France, not militarily, but physically. But, aside from meeting the wrong people and going jogging to maintain his condition, there was not much to blame him for in the strict criminal sense.”

Abballa had an “unpredictable” personality and, like other jihadism suspects, deliberately concealed his thoughts and intentions, Trévidic added. Police had placed him under surveillance since February 2015 and phone taps continued until his death, but did not reveal any valuable information, Reuters reported.

Molins said: “These telephone interceptions hadn’t brought to light even the smallest element that would have allowed detection of the preparation of a violent act.”

The phone tap was linked to his involvement in the Pakistan group.

‘Month of calamity’

The attack came days after the start of the Euro 2016 football tournament, which has drawn millions of foreign fans to France and seen nearly 100,000 police and security personnel deployed nationwide. Millions of foreigners are in the country to follow matches being hosted in 10 cities, and the government has vowed to let festivities continue regardless of the terror threat.

“I am aware of the self-sacrifice of police officers,”

Prime Minister Manuel Valls paid tribute to French police on Tuesday, saying some officers’ names and addresses are circulated on social media.

“The strongest measures for now is respect and to gather around security forces and police and gendarmes in these circumstances,” Valls said.

In May, ISIL’s chief spokesperson urged followers in a recording to attack France during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, calling for a “month of calamity.”

The attack near Paris came days after a man who claimed allegiance to ISIL shot and killed 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The A’maq press agency also claimed responsibility for that attack.

The French national assembly observed a minute’s silence Tuesday, commemorating the victims of both attacks.

Hanne Cokelaere contributed to this report.

This article has been updated with additional reporting and to correctly attribute the quote in the headline.

Corni

With leaders like Holland, Vals, Merkel and all EU bureaucrats, Europe is going down as a freight train without brakes. As Trump says, they are all talk but not effective action. Because EU behaves impotently, will very likely disintegrate soon.

Posted on 6/15/16 | 1:09 AM CET

Walter S

Surveillance, but not arrest, not deportation. Why are known terrorists and terrorist sympathizers allowed to go around free to plot and carry out attacks? Why are western leaders continuing to let more of them in?